My family is in the process of selling our home, the home all three of my children were born into. I labored here and nursed them through all their newborn days in this bedroom, rocked them and sang to them in this nursery, cleaned up a thousand spills and exuberantly flung Cheerios in this kitchen and countless times chased them round and round the downstairs rooms. It is hard to leave! We have cultivated the berry bushes on our land and worked the soil year after year to improve our vegetable crops. Slowly, through small changes, we have made the house what we needed.
Today, during a quiet moment with my baby, I felt tears begin to overcome me at the thought of parting from a house that holds so many precious, irreplaceable memories. As I started to indulge them, I had a counter thought come to my mind: those memories belong to me, not to the house. Then I asked myself: where is your true home?
This question of the perfect home has come up for my family over and over again as we have gone in search of our new house. Where will we live? What town? What neighborhood? What style home? Every new house has something different wrong with it, a new kind of compromise, a problem, a missing piece. The perfect house seems not just elusive but impossibly expensive! And when I let myself get frustrated about that, I think that I will not ever have the home I most desire.
As I nursed Emmett today, I let myself have a conversation with Love that took me beyond these strong emotions to the comfort found in truth. Where is my true home? Is it ever in a single house? Can it be in a house at all?
There is a sweet chant I like to sing and one line of it is: "For God is my home." God, by whatever name you may use, is truly the perfect home for each of us. When we feel "at home" it is because we recognize the God-qualities in a place--peacefulness, joyfulness, spaciousness, love and ease. Also, when we don't find them, we can "put" them into a place with our own God-qualities. As a matter of fact, when I first moved into the house we live in now (the one I was just crying over leaving), I didn't like it at all. I found it dark and small and outdated and wrong for me. Over the years, we have poured love into our house, we have loved here, and Love is now reflected in this place.
What a comfort to know that the Love that makes a home goes with me wherever I go, and, like those memories, does not belong to a room or a location. No true and great thing does. How turtle like is our place in God, then. We carry our home with us, our home is all around us, a shelter and protection, a refuge and a sanctuary.
Rev. Sam Wilde
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Our thoughts are not who we are
Thoughts flow through the mind endlessly. The river of our thoughts create our experience and feeling tone in our lives. We cannot control which thoughts arise in our minds. However,
We have choices on how to approach them.
I would like to share three ways to approach thoughts which have helped me, when I feel
uncentered, disconnected from love and from God.
In order to create a change, I have to first notice that my mind is moving in a direction that
escalates feelings of doubt, fear, anger, insecurity, or any negative energy. The awareness
Of observing the thought pattern assists in detaching from the identification with the thoughts.
Once I can see what is happening, I no longer am the victim of my thoughts. Distance is created. I become the witness to my thoughts and no longer see myself as the thoughts.
We are the witness of our lives. We are pure consciousness.
I have the choice now to decide if I want to continue experiencing the suffering or to
redirect my attention toward a direction that brings healing and peace.
My teacher, Swami Satchidananda, advised me to repeat my mantra when my mind
indulges in harmful thinking. It works and is a very simple practice. A mantra is a sacred sound vibration which uplifts the mind. The energy of the sound is healing. A very simple mantra is:
Om Shanti. Shanti means peace in Sanskrit. If you are more comfortable repeating peace in English, that works also. There are thousands of mantras. Use the one that works for you.
This is a form of training the mind. We benefit from being in charge of our thoughts instead of our thoughts being in charge of us.
I enjoy practicing metta when my thoughts are not helpful toward my well being.
Metta is wonderful at any time. It is a practice taught by the Buddha to his disciples
to help develop loving kindness and compassion in our heart. We begin with repeating the following phrases to ourselves:
May I be safe from inner and outer harm
May my mind be peaceful and happy
May my body be healthy and strong
May I live with ease in this life.
You can alter the phrases so that they feel good to you.
Engaging in a spiritually uplifting practice helping to open the heart shifts energy into
A healing direction. In doing metta, do not be surprised if sometimes you feel unloving toward yourself instead of loving. It is a part of the process. Be clear about your intention of
Moving toward loving kindness and allow whatever needs to be cleared and felt move through you. Compassion toward your human experience will arise in time.
I hope that these suggestions are helpful.
Truth is one.
Paths are many.
With love,
Rev. Supriya Swerdlick
We have choices on how to approach them.
I would like to share three ways to approach thoughts which have helped me, when I feel
uncentered, disconnected from love and from God.
In order to create a change, I have to first notice that my mind is moving in a direction that
escalates feelings of doubt, fear, anger, insecurity, or any negative energy. The awareness
Of observing the thought pattern assists in detaching from the identification with the thoughts.
Once I can see what is happening, I no longer am the victim of my thoughts. Distance is created. I become the witness to my thoughts and no longer see myself as the thoughts.
We are the witness of our lives. We are pure consciousness.
I have the choice now to decide if I want to continue experiencing the suffering or to
redirect my attention toward a direction that brings healing and peace.
My teacher, Swami Satchidananda, advised me to repeat my mantra when my mind
indulges in harmful thinking. It works and is a very simple practice. A mantra is a sacred sound vibration which uplifts the mind. The energy of the sound is healing. A very simple mantra is:
Om Shanti. Shanti means peace in Sanskrit. If you are more comfortable repeating peace in English, that works also. There are thousands of mantras. Use the one that works for you.
This is a form of training the mind. We benefit from being in charge of our thoughts instead of our thoughts being in charge of us.
I enjoy practicing metta when my thoughts are not helpful toward my well being.
Metta is wonderful at any time. It is a practice taught by the Buddha to his disciples
to help develop loving kindness and compassion in our heart. We begin with repeating the following phrases to ourselves:
May I be safe from inner and outer harm
May my mind be peaceful and happy
May my body be healthy and strong
May I live with ease in this life.
You can alter the phrases so that they feel good to you.
Engaging in a spiritually uplifting practice helping to open the heart shifts energy into
A healing direction. In doing metta, do not be surprised if sometimes you feel unloving toward yourself instead of loving. It is a part of the process. Be clear about your intention of
Moving toward loving kindness and allow whatever needs to be cleared and felt move through you. Compassion toward your human experience will arise in time.
I hope that these suggestions are helpful.
Truth is one.
Paths are many.
With love,
Rev. Supriya Swerdlick
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Stay on the Path
Many years ago I heard for the first time the phrase, "trust the process," which is now, in certain circles, thrown around as a cure-all much in the same way "Let go and let God" is used. Trusting in the process means relaxing into the flow of life with the a belief in its goodness. In an essential way, it is the very base level of faith--a belief that there is something beyond us, something both seen and unseen, something greater and powerfully real.
Last week I took my children, a friend, and her child, to walk a labyrinth. It was a spectacular sunny, summer day. We had views of the mountains and down into a lake. We walked through a field of wild flowers to pass through a wooden arch into the labyrinth where the children, the three little walkers, began to excitedly follow the path as it circled in and then out and then back in again. On their way to the center, they each asked me, at different times, how to get to the end. My son even once traveled backwards, worried he had made a misstep. "You can't get off the path," I told them. "Just keep walking and you will get there."
In the labyrinth, this is absolutely true. All you need to do is keep walking on the path. If you follow it, it will lead you where you want to go. You simply cannot get lost. It isn't a maze with false dead-ends, though at times it can seem similarly confusing. But with a maze you may not make your destination. In a labyrinth, put one foot in front of the other and you can't not make it.
As I walked the labyrinth and kept saying over and over to the children, "just stay on the path. Keep going. You'll get there," I heard my own voice and my own words like an offering. "Just keep walking. Stay on the path." I began to savor the idea that you can't get off the path, and I started to see how this is the truth of life, though at times we may not believe it. But faith and trust require a level of daring, a willingness to let go of pretending we know everything, to find we have been given all we need to know.
"Trust the process" may be trite at times, or insufficient, but it speaks to the simple truth of Divine Love's universe: you will make it to the center. No matter the circuitous path or the moments when you may fear. "Just keep walking." You will get there. We do not need to know how it unfolds exactly. We can let go of our disbelief and open to a more childlike delight just as the three children at the labyrinth, on their second stroll around, began to giggle and skip, run and hop the labyrinth walk. They knew, then, that they could not get lost. And neither can we.
--Rev. Sam Wilde
Last week I took my children, a friend, and her child, to walk a labyrinth. It was a spectacular sunny, summer day. We had views of the mountains and down into a lake. We walked through a field of wild flowers to pass through a wooden arch into the labyrinth where the children, the three little walkers, began to excitedly follow the path as it circled in and then out and then back in again. On their way to the center, they each asked me, at different times, how to get to the end. My son even once traveled backwards, worried he had made a misstep. "You can't get off the path," I told them. "Just keep walking and you will get there."
In the labyrinth, this is absolutely true. All you need to do is keep walking on the path. If you follow it, it will lead you where you want to go. You simply cannot get lost. It isn't a maze with false dead-ends, though at times it can seem similarly confusing. But with a maze you may not make your destination. In a labyrinth, put one foot in front of the other and you can't not make it.
As I walked the labyrinth and kept saying over and over to the children, "just stay on the path. Keep going. You'll get there," I heard my own voice and my own words like an offering. "Just keep walking. Stay on the path." I began to savor the idea that you can't get off the path, and I started to see how this is the truth of life, though at times we may not believe it. But faith and trust require a level of daring, a willingness to let go of pretending we know everything, to find we have been given all we need to know.
"Trust the process" may be trite at times, or insufficient, but it speaks to the simple truth of Divine Love's universe: you will make it to the center. No matter the circuitous path or the moments when you may fear. "Just keep walking." You will get there. We do not need to know how it unfolds exactly. We can let go of our disbelief and open to a more childlike delight just as the three children at the labyrinth, on their second stroll around, began to giggle and skip, run and hop the labyrinth walk. They knew, then, that they could not get lost. And neither can we.
--Rev. Sam Wilde
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